One of the biggest ongoing challenges for Linux advocates has always been that there is such a paucity of data available to demonstrate the preferences of the people who are actually using the free and open source operating system.That's especially true on the desktop, where virtually countless different flavors are available as a free download for every taste and purpose, but for which there's really no way to take an accurate count, since typically they don't ever get associated with any sales statistics.DistroWatch's page-hit rankings are often used as a stand-in for such data in the absence of anything better, but every once in a while someone takes a survey that provides fresh insight.Case in point? LinuxQuestion.org's annual Members Choice Awards, the results of which were just announced for 2012.Linux Mint at No. 3Longtime readers may recall the results of last year's poll, in which Ubuntu took first place on the desktop while Slackware came in a very close second.This year, Slackware pulled into first place, with 20.59 percent, while Ubuntu dropped to 17.02 percent of the 981 votes that were collected.Next in line was Linux Mint, with 16.21 percent, followed by Debian, with 12.64 percent.For the twelfth year in a row, a record number of votes were cast, popular community site LinuxQuestions.org said.Honors for the Raspberry PiAs for other notable results? There were plenty.To wit: KDE won best desktop environment, with 31.31 percent; LibreOffice won as best office suite, with a whopping 85.14 percent; Firefox took top honors for browsers, with 52.76 percent; and GIMP won as top graphics application of the year, with 69.85 percent.It almost goes without saying that Debian won on servers, with 28.74 percent, and Android won on mobile, with 66.86 percent.Also not surprising was that the Raspberry Pi claimed new open source hardware product of the year, with 79.29 percent.Want to see the rest of the results? An overall summary of the winners and a detailedbreakdown by category are available on the LinuxQuestions.org site=========================The 5 most popular Linux distributions

These conclusions are not from a formal survey! Why?

IDG and Gartner figures only look at pre-installed server operating systems, and Web browser surveys -- such as StatCounter and NetMarketShare -- don't drill down far enough to say which Linux desktop distributions are the most popular.

With that, I have to turn to DistroWatch, the master Linux desktop tracking site for useful desktop Linux use data.

"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.”

All true, but for better or worse, it's also the best data we have. Other surveys, such as theLinuxQuestions Members Choice Award, are mere popularity contests. Fans vote for their favorites even if they may not use it. As LinuxQuestions founder Jeremy Garcia pointed out in the most recent survey results: "I'm fairly surprised how handily Firefox beat Chrome here. It's significantly more skewed than our actual browser stats are."

Also, for what it's worth, the DistroWatch numbers match up pretty well with the questions and comments I get from my Linux-using readers.

With all that in mind, let's take a brief look at the DistroWatch top five over the last few months.

From the bottom up we find:

4: Debian: I've never been a big Debian fan -- I much prefer Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu and Mepis -- but lots of other people are. Debian, which just turned 19, remains important not just because it is the foundation for many other Linux distributions, but because year after year it continues to be loved by its users.

4: Fedora:But while Debian isn't one of my favorites, I confess I really haven't cared for Fedora,Red Hat's community Linux distribution, in recent years. Well, it's not so much Fedora, it's the fact that it uses GNOME 3.x -- the desktop interface I love to hate.

Regardless of how I feel about it though, Fedora clearly has its fans. And, if you work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development, it's a really wise idea to keep a copy of Fedora on hand so you can see RHEL's future.

3: Ubuntu: What's that you say? Ubuntu: the darling of so many Linux fans only in third place? Yep. It's in third. Why? Well even though I like its relatively new Unity interface, a lot of other people really don't. I think that mostly it's because while Unity is great for new users who aren't especially computer savvy, a lot of Linux professionals find it gets in the way -- and, of course, experienced old Linux hands are exactly the kind of people who visit DistroWatch.

That said, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth thinks the operating system will see 20 million new PCs sold with Ubuntu in 2012, and that's not counting people who install it. Those people will also largely be new computer users. If Ubuntu can get most of the new users coming to Linux, I think they'll be happy even if they're no longer as popular with old-guard Linux desktop users.

And why is Mageia so popular? I think it's because it's a straightforward easy-to-use Linux distribution. Unlike Ubuntu's Unity user interface, Mageia uses the Linux pro friendly KDE 4.8 desktop. In short, it's just a darn good KDE distribution -- which, by the way -- according to LinuxQuestions' last survey, is now the single most popular desktop interface of all.

Honorable mentions this week go out toOpenSUSE and CrunchBang Linux, both of which were highly recommended by their fans for their feature set and their passionate user and developer communities, but fell just short of the nominations to get into the top five.

Did your favorite not make the list? Have something to say about one of the contenders? Remember, the top five arebased on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!